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Chennai Coastal Cleanup: Join This Initiative That Has Cleared 50 Tonnes Of Trash From The Beach

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A yearly beach cleanup organised by the Chennai Trekking Club, this initiative is all about raising awareness about garbage pollution, and helping keep the shorelines clean.

Trash Talk

Coastal cities like Chennai have long used the sea as a garbage dump, but in recent years the city’s spiking population has seen vast amounts of trash finding its way to the beach from the sea. To stop that from happening, and being the good Samaritans we all need, the Chennai Trekking Club has been stepping up, and since 2010 has decided to step in to civic responsibility by organising a yearly beach cleanup. The Chennai Coastal Cleanup {CCC} in 2017 drew a 6,000-strong crowd and covered 20kms of beachfront across Chennai and volunteers collected 50 tons of waste! Yes 50 tons!

With plenty of support from corporate organisations, the events are usually on a large scale. If you sign up for this year’s clean up, you too will probably be given gloves, jute bags and any other essentials you may need before you set off. Your task is simple: pick up anything that isn’t biodegradable and once your bag is full, you meet the staff at pre-set collection points. The Adyar and Marina beach stretches are primarily polluted by garbage from recreational activities by the beach’s visitors and includes massive amounts of plastic packets and water bottles.

Where Does It Go?

Once the trash is collected, it is segregated in to recyclable and non-recyclable waste and sent off to recycling plants that CCC has partnered with. This is an important step because recyclable waste forms a large part of overall waste. In fact last year out of the 50 tonnes of waste they collected, 60 per cent was recyclable!

This year’s CCC is expected to be bigger than last year, and will take place in the latter half of 2018. So do your bit for nature by reusing and recycling as much as possible, and sign up here for the clean up when registrations open up in April.